wowcheckout

Non-custodial Wownero checkout software for merchants. Payments go directly from the customer to the merchant wallet.

wowcheckout is open source and self-hostable. It creates invoices, shows payment instructions, and watches the chain for incoming payments using view-only wallet access (address + secret view key). It can also notify your systems via API and webhooks.

Hard rules:

• It never requests or stores private spend keys.
• It never signs transactions.
• It never moves funds on behalf of users.
• View-only access (wallet address + private view key) is the maximum trust boundary.

Contents

• Who it's for
• What it does
• Trust model
• Repository layout
• Screenshots
• Quick start
• Self-hosted deployment
• Self-hosted deployment (no Docker)
• Development (API)

Who it's for

If you want Wownero payments to go straight to your own wallet, this is for you.

Common fits:

• A merchant who wants a clean hosted checkout UI (self-hosted by you).
• A team that wants API + webhooks to plug into an existing order flow.
• Anyone who prefers a conservative trust model (view-only access for detection).

What it does

Typical flow:

1. Your integration creates an invoice (defined in WOW).
2. The UI shows payment instructions (address + amount).
3. The system observes the chain using view-only wallet access to detect payments and update invoice status.
4. Optional integrations (for example webhooks) can be used to trigger your internal order flow.

Not included (by design):

• It does not provide custody, refunds, or any fund-moving automation.
• It does not act as a financial intermediary.
• It does not touch fiat rails in the core system.

Trust model

• Funds always move from the customer to the merchant wallet; wowcheckout only observes the chain and reports status.
• You keep spend authority. The maximum permission level wowcheckout uses is view-only wallet access (wallet address + private view key).
• If any configuration or integration implies spend authority, treat it as a misconfiguration and stop.

Repository layout

• ui/: web UI
• api/: API service (Python)
• docker-compose.yml: local stack and self-hosted deployment
• nginx/: optional reverse proxy / TLS termination (used by Docker Compose)

Screenshots

Post-login UI:

Dashboard

Invoices

Create invoice

Public invoice page

Quick start

Homepage only (Docker)

docker build -t wowcheckout-home .
docker run --rm -p 8080:80 wowcheckout-home

Open http://localhost:8080.

Full stack (Docker Compose)

docker compose up --build

Open http://localhost:8180 for the UI. In the default Compose configuration, only nginx is published to the host. The API, Postgres, and wallet-rpc services are reachable only inside the Docker network. If you prefer not to run nginx, you can publish ui and api ports directly instead (you will also need to serve qr/ at /qr/ on your site URL).

Self-hosted deployment (Docker Compose)

1. Copy the environment template and fill in required values:

cp .env.example .env

2. Set required values in .env:

• POSTGRES_USER, POSTGRES_PASSWORD, POSTGRES_DB
• API_KEYS, API_KEY_ENCRYPTION_KEY
• SITE_URL (public URL for the UI)
• Wownero view-only wallet settings (MONERO_WALLET_RPC_*)
• MONERO_DAEMON_URL (choose one of the options below)

3. Choose a Wownero daemon source:

• Use an existing daemon (default):
  • Leave MONERO_DAEMON_URL as-is (the default points at a local Wownero daemon).
• Run your own daemon via Docker Compose:
  • Set MONERO_DAEMON_URL=http://wownerod:34568
  • Start the stack with the local-daemon profile (see step 5)
  • Note: initial sync can take a long time and uses significant disk; payment detection won’t be reliable until the daemon is synced.

4. Choose a wallet-rpc target and provision view-only wallets:

• Use the bundled wallet-rpc containers:
  • Set MONERO_WALLET_RPC_URLS=http://wallet-rpc-reconciler-1:18083,http://wallet-rpc-reconciler-2:18083,http://wallet-rpc-reconciler-3:18083
• Or point to an external wallet-rpc service:
  • Set MONERO_WALLET_RPC_URLS, MONERO_WALLET_RPC_USER, MONERO_WALLET_RPC_PASSWORD, and MONERO_WALLET_RPC_WALLET_PASSWORD

5. Start the stack:

docker compose up --build -d

If you’re running the bundled wownerod service:

docker compose --profile local-daemon up --build -d

Optional: Postgres backups (disabled by default)

This repository includes an optional db-backup service that runs pg_dump hourly and writes backups to ./backups/postgres on the host.

Enable it by starting Compose with the db-backup profile:

docker compose --profile db-backup up --build -d

Retention defaults to 7 days. To override:

• Set BACKUP_RETENTION_DAYS in .env

Optional: donations (disabled by default)

Donation endpoints and UI are off by default for self-hosted deployments. To enable donations:

• Set DONATIONS_ENABLED=true
• Set FOUNDER_PAYMENT_ADDRESS and FOUNDER_VIEW_KEY

The UI uses the same flag (via Compose), so /donate stays unavailable unless donations are explicitly enabled.

Self-hosted deployment (no Docker)

This section describes running the services directly on a host (or VMs) without Docker.

You will run:

• Postgres (external service)
• API (gunicorn / uvicorn)
• Reconciler worker (a separate process)
• UI (Next.js)
• A reverse proxy is optional, but strongly recommended for TLS, serving /qr/, and providing a single origin for UI + API.

1. Install prerequisites

• Postgres 16+
• Python 3.12+
• Node.js 20+ (for the UI)
• A Wownero daemon endpoint (MONERO_DAEMON_URL) and at least one wownero-wallet-rpc instance reachable by the API

2. Configure environment variables

Start from .env.example and adjust for your host. For non-Docker deployments you will typically set:

• DATABASE_URL=postgresql://...@127.0.0.1:5432/...
• QR_STORAGE_DIR to a persistent directory on disk (for example /var/lib/wowcheckout/qr)
• SITE_URL to your public URL (for example https://example.com)
• API_BASE_URL for the UI:
  • If using a reverse proxy that routes /api/ to the API on the same origin, set API_BASE_URL=https://example.com
  • If not using a reverse proxy, set API_BASE_URL=http://127.0.0.1:8000 (see the notes in step 6)

If you need a new API_KEY_ENCRYPTION_KEY value:

python -c 'from cryptography.fernet import Fernet; print(Fernet.generate_key().decode())'

3. Create the Postgres database

Create a database and user matching your DATABASE_URL. On first startup, the API will create tables automatically.

4. Run the API

python -m venv api/.venv
api/.venv/bin/pip install -r api/requirements.txt

# Export env vars (or use your process manager to load them)
set -a
source .env
set +a

api/.venv/bin/gunicorn app.main:app -k uvicorn.workers.UvicornWorker -b 127.0.0.1:8000 -w "${GUNICORN_WORKERS:-2}" --chdir api

5. Run the reconciler worker

Run this as a separate long-running process (same environment variables as the API):

set -a
source .env
set +a

api/.venv/bin/python -m app.reconciler

6. Build and run the UI

cd ui
npm ci

# Optional but recommended to keep these explicit in non-Docker deployments
export API_BASE_URL="${API_BASE_URL:-http://127.0.0.1:8000}"
export NEXT_PUBLIC_SITE_URL="${SITE_URL:-http://127.0.0.1:3000}"
export NEXT_PUBLIC_DONATIONS_ENABLED="${DONATIONS_ENABLED:-false}"

npm run build
npm run start -- -p 3000 -H 127.0.0.1

Notes:

• The UI makes some in-browser requests to /api/... on the same origin. In production, prefer a reverse proxy that serves the UI and forwards /api/ to the API.
• The QR PNGs are written to QR_STORAGE_DIR and must be reachable at https://<your-site>/qr/<invoice_id>.png.

Optional: reverse proxy (Nginx)

Nginx is optional. Any reverse proxy that can:

• route /api/ to the API,
• route / to the UI,
• and serve the QR directory at /qr/

is fine.

Example (adjust server_name, TLS, and paths to match your host):

server {
  listen 443 ssl;
  server_name example.com;

  # ssl_certificate ...;
  # ssl_certificate_key ...;

  location /api/ {
    proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8000/api/;
    proxy_set_header Host $host;
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
  }

  location /qr/ {
    alias /var/lib/wowcheckout/qr/;
    add_header Cache-Control "public, max-age=31536000, immutable";
    try_files $uri =404;
  }

  location / {
    proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:3000/;
    proxy_set_header Host $host;
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
  }
}

Development (API, Python)

1. Set environment variables (see api/.env.example):

export DATABASE_URL=postgresql://wowcheckout:wowcheckout@localhost:5432/wowcheckout
export API_KEYS=change-me-1

2. Install dependencies:

python -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -r api/requirements.txt

3. Start the API:

cd api
uvicorn app.main:app --reload

The API listens on http://127.0.0.1:8000.